The Program at Columbia

The twelve-month M.A. Program in Climate and Society trains professionals and academics to understand and cope with the impacts of climate variability and climate change on society and the environment. This rigorous program emphasizes the problems of developing societies.

Columbia is at the forefront of research on climate and climate applications, and is supported by an extensive network of research units and faculty. Drawing on the superb educational and research facilities of Columbia University, the M.A. Program in Climate and Society combines elements of established programs in earth sciences, earth engineering, international relations, political science, sociology, and economics with unique classes in interdisciplinary applications specially designed for the program’s students.

A set of tailor-made core courses provides a scientific basis for inquiry and stress interdisciplinary problem solving.

The core modules include: Dynamics of climate variability and change; Regional climate and climate impacts; Quantitative models of climate-sensitive natural and human systems; and the Integrative Seminar: Managing Climate Variability and Adapting to Climate Change. A professional development seminar and a choice between a summer internship or research thesis complete the required core.

At the end of twelve intensive, rewarding months, our graduates are prepared to address environmental issues from positions in government, business, and nongovernmental organizations. Some continue their academic careers in the social or natural sciences.

Practitioners of an Integrated Approach

For ten thousand years, farmers have struggled with unknown variables in climate and weather. Atmospheric cycles can be responsible for years of famine or prosperity.

In the past few decades, scientists have achieved a new level of understanding of, and some ability to predict, natural climate variability and human-induced climate change.

This program is designed to provide the necessary skills and needed background in the social and natural sciences to:

• policy administrators and other decision makers in water resource management, agriculture, health, tourism, and economics, especially from the developing world;

• policy professionals in the United States and elsewhere who want to pursue strategies in sustainable development;

• private-sector professionals dealing with risk and decisions relating to environmental change;

• educators training a generation that can no longer ignore climate.

The program also serves recent graduates in the natural and social sciences interested in interdisciplinary environmental action or research.

The program has an intrinsic interest in recruiting outstanding applicants from the developing world who will return to advance development in their own societies.

The Climate and Society Team

Mark Cane, Director, M.A. Program in Climate and Society
Mark Cane is the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics. He is Chief Physical Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), an organization which he helped to found. Cane and the current director of the IRI, Steve Zebiak, made the first scientific prediction of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon in the 1980s.

Mingfang Ting, Associate Director, M.A. Program in Climate and Society
Doherty Senior Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Ting joined Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in August 2003 from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she worked for ten years as Assistant and Associate Professor. She has taught many undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Illinois, ranging from introduction to meteorology to advanced atmospheric dynamics. Her main research interests include the impact of global climate change on regional scales and teleconnection dynamics, modeling and diagnostics of the climatological and anomalous stationary waves and the impact of sea surface temperatures on global climate, and the dynamics of the droughts and floods circulation for the United States and the North American monsoon system. She received her Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University in 1990.

Benjamin S. Orlove, Associate Director, M.A. Program in Climate and Society
Orlove, an anthropologist, has conducted field work in the Peruvian Andes since the 1970s and also carried out research in East Africa, the Italian Alps, and Aboriginal Australia. His early work focused on agriculture, fisheries and rangelands. More recently he has studied climate change and glacier retreat, with an emphasis on water, natural hazards and the loss of iconic landscapes. In addition to his numerous academic articles and books, his publications include a memoir and a book of travel writing. Orlove taught for many years at the University of California, Davis and is currently a Senior Research Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), a Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and serves as one of the four co-directors of the Center for Research in Environmental Decisions (CRED). Orlove earned a BA from Harvard University and and MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Cynthia Thomson, Assistant Director, M.A. Program in Climate and Society